


Bees and the Country.

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Pining, Pining Sherlock, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 20:53:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes dreams of the country. He dreams of John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bees and the Country.

[i]

John Watson stands past the yellow streaks of police lines, a sturdy shadow cast in flashing red and blue, red and blue of police lights. Cast innocuous: hands clasped behind his back, shoulders held easy, (at ease solider), and Sherlock knows exactly what he's done. 

Poison pill in his pocket, smoking gun in John's, Sherlock wears his heart on his sleeve over Chinese as the candle burns low, flickers across warm lines as John laughs. It's a sound Sherlock gets used to. 

Barefoot padding, rattling pipes and the hiss of shower spray evades weak-limbed, half-awake haziness of mornings, every morning, and Sherlock swings out of bed when the clinking sounds. Breakfast for two is the sound Sherlock gets used to. The  _clink clink_   _clatter_ of fork on plate: quotidian consistencies that should irk him greatly, but instead, Sherlock is now consistently hungry in the mornings, and he's gotten used to it. 

Two teacups in lieu of one: a company, morning and evening and night. They bleed soft warmth into his palms like wool on a cold day. Bleed soft warmth like John does when Sherlock is dripping onto the pavement one afternoon, teeth chattering and skin prickly and John pulls him close against the  _thump thump_  of his warm blood, oblivious to the stale, muddy, frozen water seeping into his jacket.

Bleeding warm, like the nights Sherlock wants to drill into his brain with cocaine and feel it burn, and John makes two tea cups of tea and talks about Afghanistan, painted in pained creases, but enduring. 

Because he's nothing if not Sherlock's selfless friend. And Sherlock's nothing if not in love with his selfless friend. 

Which is ridiculous, nothing short of dangerous, so he hides it. He hides it in the sharpness of his bones and the pallor of his skin when he refuses to eat breakfast, particularly petulant. He hides it in the half-drunk cold tea, the teacup left for John to collect. He hides it in the distasteful invasion of John's privacy and in jerky irritation when John doesn't always keep up. He hides it in the smoking, stolen gun - the grotesque smiley of his love etched in gunshots into the wall for John to see and never understand.

He hides it in his pocket with the poison pill until the poison seeps through and it makes him dizzy. 

John is laughing one morning and Sherlock's dizzy. He's dizzy, so he leans over the table, over eggs and apples and tea, and he kisses John.

With a sound he's not yet used to, John opens for him.

Sherlock hasn't expected this – John cast in the light of his love. It's novel and the world is tilting, so he kisses John again and he kisses John again and John, fingers curling around his neck, kisses him back, and their tongues and pulses brush together in sync.

John holds his bones, steady surgeon hands. 

 

John is talking into his skin, gruff, sex-laced voice shot deep and tugging at Sherlock's navel.

His eyelids droop, hair awry from when Sherlock pulled at it in the blur of his orgasm. He's sweat glazed and stunning in the low light. Sherlock has him trapped on the bed with an arm, leg sliding against leg. John sighs and he smiles, and Sherlock loves him.  

The moment after: dopamine dancing in his blood and silvery spikes of pleasure. Sherlock savors the afterglow like a cigarette, holds it in his lungs. John stretches out languorous so Sherlock can curl into his side and sleep. Sleep that was once elusive comes easily to him now, head on John's chest, steady thrum of a steady heart under his ear, calloused fingertips on his spine and he floats off into dreams of bees and the country, old age and John.

And contentment.

 

John watches the telly, and Sherlock watches the fire licking wood, the blinking Christmas lights, his head on John's lap. John strokes his hair, and Sherlock counts their breaths. 

The film escalates to men jumping off buildings, and they defy physics in a way that Sherlock wishes he could. Invincible, never splintering on impact.

Because John's brain exists on a single stratum of concentration at a time, he stops stroking. Sherlock is entirely dissatisfied, and it takes five nudges before John takes notice. 

He chuckles, soft and warm, and Sherlock feels it in his belly. 

"You're like an overly pampered house cat, Sherlock. Have I told you that? You are."

"You have. And I'm still decidedly not." 

John laughs, Sherlock feels it in his chest.

"You are."

"Helps me think", Sherlock presses fingertips into John's thigh in an imitation of irritation. 

"Hmm."

John's doing some sort of illogical magic, and Sherlock's heart is doing some sort of illogical stuttering. He rolls over as the drama heightens, and plants his face into utterly hideous red and green jumper, embellished with video-game-esque pine trees. Under his lashes, he can only see the blurry green. He's sleepy. He breathes, and he counts.

He falls asleep to the smell of wool, of tea and faint traces of gun oil as there's an explosion behind him that John seems to enjoy. 

 

Sherlock fumbles with sex, and John has an astounding skill set.

Three Continents Watson, he says. At your service, he says, and his hands bring Sherlock to pleasure like there's nothing to it. Like a simple deduction. 

Sometimes, when John is snoring, and he  _does_ snore, soft, growling snores like a soothing cadence, Sherlock worries how long he'll be able to hold them together, sate John's needs as John sates his. 

It's ridiculous, it's dangerous, and Sherlock hides it in his kisses. It's all fine. They've settled. 

 

It doesn't feel like they've settled. 

John loses the smuggler's tail. Sherlock snaps at him and John snaps back. They're like hissing cats, claws drawn, and they're fighting. They both leave scratches, and there's an uncertain ache deep in Sherlock's belly. 

Of course. They live together in a fledgling romantic entanglement, of course they're going to have disagreements. Arguments, Sherlock tells his cold tea and he scowls at it because John didn't make it and it tastes wrong on his tongue. His stomach is still in knots when John returns, looking vaguely irritated still, and Sherlock wants to touch. 

He's pathetic in his longing and John looks vaguely irritated, and because he looks vaguely irritated, Sherlock seeks him out, and John looks vaguely irritated. A painful skipping cycle for fools. 

They're not affectionate in public, not overly affectionate in private, and both strike Sherlock as strange because John writes poems. He buys wine and chocolate and Sherlock's seem him at it. Sherlock's seen arms around the girls, holding hands, kisses on the streets that look like wine and chocolate. 

John evades affection with a practiced ease.  _Three Continents Watson_ , he had said once. _At your service._

And it hurts, ache deep in his belly that he hides in his kisses because it's fine.

An arbitrary ache, one he can't place. Like the feeling he gets when he almost remembers a name, but he can't catch it. Like lights scattering at the corner of his eye. 

Mycroft catches it for him in a lengthy discourse, and Sherlock wants to jump off something very tall, take his brother down with him. 

 _All hearts are broken Sherlock. John wants someone he can take home, please his Mum._ And he looks pointedly to the experiment, festering away on the window sill. 

Sherlock throws a cup in his direction, which he avoids. Infuriating. 

And truth be told, it isn't the vivisection that pierces him; it's the truth that cuts like the edges of the splintered tea cup. He takes John's wrist at a crime scene, because John isn't moving quickly enough, and Donavan snorts at them, raised eyebrows like she's surprised at John. As though she's asking: really John Watson? _Him?_

John pulls out of his grasp, grimace-smiles in that formidable way of his. Clenched jaw, clenched fists, and Sherlock can't look at John so he looks at the dead girl. _Been to Japan,_ he tells Lestrade, and it's useless information, but he's distracted. 

Infuriating. It's infuriating and Sherlock hides his nervousness in dark kisses, in skin and bruises and bite marks, in his moans. He'll take whatever John gives him, and right now, John gives him this, so he takes all of it and hides his nervousness deep in his belly.  

In the dead of the night John's heartbeat slows as he sleeps. In the dead of the night, it's OK for Sherlock to delude himself with hopes of a lifetime.

 

"That is...", John squints at him over his newspaper, "Isn't that mine?" 

It's the slow drag of a mid-January morning, and Sherlock's been rooting around for something to fend off the cold, he's frozen all the way to his marrow. He slides into the chair and a frown scrunches into existence on John's brow - the jumper, maroon and bulky, neglected for so long that John can't tell if it's his. His ankle is warm against Sherlock's. 

He watches John's brow ease into realisation, and it  _is_ his jumper. Had it for ages. Looks bloody awful on him. It's so unfair, Sherlock doesn't look awful in anything. 

Genes, Sherlock tells him. And he's got a charm that's all his own. 

Smug bastard, John says, and pushes tea towards him. Plucks something from his shoulder and lets it drop to the kitchen tiles. They're both smiling. 

John's not around that night, his absence lingers around the flat like a sad ghost. Sherlock wears the jumper to bed. 

 

 He's swallowed a bucket of ice, and his ribs hurt. 

It's a long time coming, and Sherlock's incapable of not noticing in the first place, but John's gazes are straying, touches perfunctory, his smile tight with contrition. Already full of apology. 

It's a long time coming, but when it comes, it's a sudden electric jolt and his ribs hurt.

I'm sorry, John says and he shifts and fidgets, fists clenching and un-clenching, distressed. Apprehensive as Sherlock's throat burns. I'm sorry, he says, and Sherlock can't look at John, so he looks through the microscope. Blood and smoke. Debris of someone else's life, as his own takes on a shaky edge, threatening debris. 

He's swallowed a bucket of ice, and he can't speak. 

"Met someone?" He says at length, and John hems and haws and clearly, he has, and he spares Sherlock but Sherlock doesn't want him to. He wants to know. Who? Who? Why? 

But he already knows why.

He swallows and tastes blood - he's been biting his tongue, because John's a good man, Sherlock's selfless friend, and Sherlock will sooner cut his tongue out than ask for more than he already has. Sherlock's selfish, crass and broken, but he'll cut his tongue out before he tells John to stay, stay because I love you John. 

It's fine. Not a problem. Did you bring milk? I need some foil, will you get me them? I need to take these down to the lab for further testing, will you get them by the time I'm back?

John is nodding,  _yes, yes fine,_ stark relief palpable, and Sherlock can't look at John, so he looks at his watch and he says: _be back by five._  

The ground spins out of his control and his tongue bleeds with words he can never say. Sherlock flags down a cab, and heading to the morgue has a terrible, ironic humour to it that he thinks he likes. 

 

Chemical defect, found on the losing side. He values cold logic above all of it. 

Sherlock Holmes, poison pill in his pocket, wearing his heart on his sleeve over Chinese and his laugh is laced bitter, it draws a questioning look from Molly. He shakes his head. It's nothing. They're in the morgue, is bitterness really out of place?

He spends hours here, frozen stiff, and he talks and talks and talks to the corpses. Dissects, examines, puts them back together - quick and clean, unlike his situation with John, excruciatingly messy. Are you OK? Molly asks, touches his sleeve in concern and he wants to say no, he wants to tell, and his tongue is bleeding because he can't use his words.  

John's distance lingers around the flat like a sad ghost, and Sherlock wears his jumper to bed. 

Sleep is, once again, very elusive, and Sherlock listens to the tick tick of the ever ticking time in the artificial hush and the night passes like a sad ghost. He's exhausted, teetering on the edge of mad delirium with every passing tick and he stares at John's side of the bed, thinks maybe he made John up. Fingers skate empty cotton, bereft of John. The jumper still smells like John against his face. Sherlock doesn't think about it, he inhales, swallows, longs and maybe the night will tick tick itself away to a new day before he rips himself apart. 

He dreams of wool and tea, bleeding heat into his heart.

 

"Brilliant!" John the blogger says. "Meretricious", Sherlock the detective intones, and fog swirls around London, blurring lights so that everything feels like a dream. A fog of female perfume follows John around. It doesn't matter, Sherlock's the detective, John's the blogger, and they're friends. Best friends. The dynamic duo. They hail a cab together and drink tea at the flat, and Mycroft sneers like he knows a secret. 

The secret is base, disgusting in Sherlock's mouth. The secret is hope, rising hot like bile, and Sherlock maybe bulimic, but maybe it's another fling. John's partial to flings. 

Sherlock clings to hope like it's his lifeline. Mycroft knows it's not, and will tell him, sharp words tossed like flashing knives and Mrs. Hudson tuts later, picking up splintered tea cups.

Mary, Mycroft smirks. She's called Mary, Sherlock. You'd like her too, if you were John.  

He looks apologetic, like he's trying to ease Sherlock into the pain, gently tugging, but Sherlock's bleeding already, and he's run out of tea cups. 

When he pretends, it feels like he's running. 

 

"You'll be joining Marlene tonight?"

"Mary, Sherlock."

"Why can't you come? Date with Mabel?"

"Mary, Sherlock. And yes."

"Are you honestly considering bringing Mark over for Christmas?"

" _Mary,_ Sherlock! And yes, please don't be rude."

Sherlock is always rude. He's been growing a colony in the kettle, and John slams out, spends the night with Mary. 

 

And in the end, Sherlock's polite. 

 

Heard a lot about you, Mr. Holmes, she says, and the twinkles in her eyes rival the Christmas baubles. 

Sherlock, please, he says, and his mouth curls into something that's not a smile. Her tinkling laugh lingers around the flat, Christmas bells, and Sherlock can't look at John, so he looks out the window, fog rolling around like it's just a bad dream. Mary's incessant perfection is just a bad dream. The way John looks at her is just a bad dream. Sherlock's tongue is bleeding with words he's trapped. 

_You'd like her too, if you were John._

There's no fire, and no one defies physics this Christmas. There are no explosions this Christmas. Sherlock doesn't sleep. 

By the end of the night, he's left with too much wine and the subsequent nausea, and John retires with his lover. Sherlock can hear them. 

He sits on the window ledge, watches the smoke swirl fancy, disappear into the fog, watches red tips and the chemical transfer of burning paper and tobacco. Nicotine feels fantastic in his veins, but Sherlock longs for cocaine. 

He's got a maroon jumper, and he pretends he can see blurry green under his lashes, video game-esque pine trees. 

 

February, and the flat is bleak, dusty, human absence lingering like sad, very silent ghosts. He arrives battered from a case and Mrs. Hudson looks at him like she's never seen anything more sad. 

Ridiculous, he says, but leans into her hands as she fusses, and he can't look at the flat, so he looks out the window and London moves in a disjoint fashion, like another dream. 

Much later, he pulls out case files and books and apparatus, spreads them over the tables where the medical journals used to be, and slowly he claims the gaping space as his own. Satisfied, he makes the first cup of tea he's had since John moved out, clinking too loudly in the silence. It tastes wrong on his tongue, in his throat. 

It's the last tea cup, and Mrs. Hudson isn't happy when it splinters against the door, but the loud, tinkling crash is like therapy, so Sherlock breaks dishes. One after the other, an experiment, until his fingers are bleeding and he tastes salt. He can't breathe and Mrs. Hudson looks at him like he's the saddest hing she's ever seen. 

It's not sad. It's just aftermath. It's just reality. His face is streaked with blood and tears, like he's been to war. 

 

John beams up at him like a compact ball of warm light. 

"Me?" Sherlock blinks. 

John grins and he grins wider and Sherlock keeps blinking like he doesn't understand. He _doesn't_ understand. 

"You."

"Are you sure?"

John nods. "There's no one else I can even imagine asking."

He wants to fall to concrete, to his hands and knees, retch his heart out. 

"Alright."

"Alright?" John barks with laughter, and he's clapping Sherlock on the back. He's happy.  _Ecstatic_. Can hardly believe it. "You'll do it?"

Dry winds of late September breeze past them in uncaring eddies, they're on the outskirts of a crime scene, and John couldn't look happier.

"I will."

And he pulls Sherlock close, against the  _thump thump_ of his warm blood, and Sherlock remembers this, but he's drenched in something worse than stale water on a rainy afternoon. 

John's still grinning when he pulls away.

 

Everyone is obnoxiously happy. Hateful. He might drown himself in the champagne.

Behind flowers and glasses shining in pinpoints, John winks at him. He smiles back, customary. Mrs. Hudson's trying to catch his eye, he'd seen her sniffling through the speech. "Oh, Sherlock", she'd said, fluttering and anxious, when he told her he's been honoured with best man. She's looked as though she wants to hold his hand all night, take him home, comfort him with childish pleasures. He's not adverse to the idea.

But now's not the time. 

Customary smile in place, he dances with the bridesmaid and hardly even notices it. He twirls Mary around to her beautiful delight, and Molly finds him until John asks: might he cut in? And cut in he does. Sherlock expects his face to split into half, and he tells him.

John smiles wider, gleaming teeth and warm lines, and Sherlock loves him.

"How do you expect me to stop?"

John's bleeding warmth, and Sherlock loves him. 

"I'm happier than I've ever been", he says and he's looking over Sherlock's shoulder, looking into the distance, and Sherlock knows where. "I'm happy", he says, and Sherlock's ribs ache until John pulls back, gleaming teeth and warm lines.

"Wouldn't have happened without you."

"Me?" He sounds like an idiot, echoing is words like that. 

"You", John squeezes him and Sherlock allows it. "You Sherlock Holmes, you saved my life. Thank god for Mike Stamford."

Sherlock's ribs ache and he can't breathe and he's itching with something he can't articulate. The room goes blurry, and they're all drowning. 

"Are you about to cry?"

He's about to cry, and he loves John. 

John's about to cry, and maybe he loves Sherlock, but that's not what he says.

He says, "Thank you, Sherlock. Thanks." 

They take off too soon for some blisteringly hot island that sounds utterly deplorable. Sherlock tells the skull exactly how deplorable. The skull grins at him, grins and grins, and it's useless.

He's got a maroon jumper, bulky and old - he's been to war with it, and he loves John because John's been to war too, maybe it felt the same. 

He savors the cigarettes, holds smoke in his lungs. 

Thank you, he'd said. 

He dreams of John and old-age. He dreams of bees, and he dreams of the country. 

 

[ii]

They continue in their trajectories, travel forward, tugging each other as though linked by a chain. John is warm and happy, Sherlock wears melancholy carved into his bones, hides it in the cases, in the research, in the work. A decade, and Greg Lestrade smiles at him, says, "You're a good man, Sherlock." 

And maybe he is. 

Sherlock realises he's only beginning to see bigger parts of a whole, the world like an interlace of lives, wrapped around his own. He sees the buzz of Bolognese cafes and he sees the quiet of a kitchen tucked into a wall in Kathmandu - he sees windows, gleaming and whole, and windows, broken for so long that what should be jagged edges are smooth, not unlike himself. His mouth tilts and he feels like he laughs at all the wrong things, but maybe he always has laughed at all the wrong things.

The puzzle comes together, jagged edges coalescing, and Sherlock longs for John to be bored so he can go home and hunt with him. Mary would make them tea later. 

Sherlock smiles at them both, waves, hides his loneliness in cases abroad. And it works. He's got an international reputation, and he tells Mrs. Hudson, and she'll make him tea later, fluttering tiredly. Her hip is getting worse, but she smiles the brightest among the two of them. Says she's proud of him. 

And maybe he is too. 

 

_Mary passed away. Funeral arrangements. Come home when you can, please._

He's in Cairo, caught in a smuggling ring. The e-mail catches him like an ominous premonition, one he doesn't understand. 

He's terrified, and the world travels too slowly, crawling snails, glacial pace. 

His stomach turns unpleasantly and he refuses everything twice -  the flight is distressing to  being with. Sherlock almost bores a hole through the floor with his incessant foot tapping, and his neighbor goes from vexed to quickly concerned, but Sherlock's fighting three days worth of sleeplessness and a horrific jet lag, if he has to talk he'll vomit. He rushes past terminals, coated in sticky grime, and there's an ache at the back of his neck. 

He throws himself into a cab, and London is blurry at his insistence, swaying roads and they might get pulled over. He's worried. 

_Where are you? – SH_

_Baker Street._

Sherlock, teeth rattling around his mouth, doesn't stop for change. 

He sits barefoot in the darkening flat, looks worn, ancient. Mouth drawn in a hard line, he sits rigid and cold and Sherlock wants to pull him close. 

"You look terrible", John says, and he's quiet. Hoarse. There are bags under his eyes. 

"What happened?"

John shrugs, and passing lights bounce off the silver in his hair. He looks so old. 

"She was at her sister's", he's talking again, but Sherlock has to lean it to hear it. "Heart-attack." 

Jaw clenched, fists clenched, and Sherlock wants to pull him close. 

He makes tea. Two teacups, a company, and they don't drink it. 

 

John doesn't sleep, so Sherlock doesn't sleep, and they stay awake, silent and shaky, sad ghosts. 

There's the general tedium of funeral arrangements, and dealing with strangers has always been jarring, and now it's positively nerve wreaking because John moves around like he's sleep walking and Sherlock can't wake him. It's not just a rainy afternoon, not just falling into the Thames, Sherlock can't fix this with the warmth of his blood. Sherlock can't fix it at all. 

 John closes another book with disinterest, a dull thud, like the sound of the coffin closing on Mary's grey face. He's not like Sherlock, so the tea cups and dishes remain intact. 

He pours seven bullets into one unarmed serial killer, eyes burning like cold blue flames, and Sherlock realises what he was afraid of - understands the terrible premonition when John laughs, first time in weeks, with a dark edge to his hard mouth.

John hides his grief in gunshots; blood and smoke sometimes, sometimes in tree barks, sometimes in walls. It works, and Sherlock knows why. Sherlock knows if he doesn't pour it out into blood and tears, he's going to wear it forever, carved into his bones. 

So he finds cases, and they run and they run and they run, gunshots and blood and smoke at their heels. Sherlock makes tea after, like Mary used to, until they learn to drink it before it goes cold. They keep running, till the tears come. 

It takes a long time. It takes a lifetime. 

 

John lives to see fifty-seven, and he keeps telling them doesn't know how he's done it. Mrs. Hudson smiles weakly and she holds their hands, calls them her boys, says she's proud of them. 

And maybe they are too. 

John says, when his knees begin to ache and his shoulder begins to trouble him, that he wants to pack up. London's making him myopic, and he'd like to waste away in some bucolic cottage now. He could have a kitchen garden and does Sherlock want to come? 

Sherlock smiles like he knows a secret, and detaches himself from the microscope. His back aches, he tells John. 

He wants to keep bees, he says. 

John laughs. They tell Mrs. Hudson's headstone together that they're sorry. They love her. They're leaving Baker Street. 

Sherlock packs his maroon jumper, falls asleep on the train. 

He dreams of old age and John. 

 

[iii] 

Sherlock's seventy-two, and he's as surprised as everyone else. 

He coughs, whippet thin body jerking, and gets a spray of blood half on the tissue, half on his sleeve, red of his blood dark specks of stains against the faded maroon. His throat is raw from coughing. He's allergic to the pollen, he keeps telling John, shut the windows, won't you? John doesn't believe him. 

He bumbles into the room, holding a cup of water, his glasses sliding down his nose again, and they slide further when he bends down to draw pills. His left arm is stiff, and Sherlock feels guilt. 

"Oh shut it, you clot", John reads his mind and bins blood-soaked tissue, it's so easy. "If I don't do it, who will?"

It's painful to sit up, but it's more painful without the pills, and there's myriad of them that he has to take. John helps him him, bleeding warmth, and Sherlock's in love with him. 

"Thank you, John", he rasps, and John helps him on his back too. He's tired to his marrow, head foggy, and he's plodding now, greater interval between each tick of time. 

John rubs his chest. "Bloody cancer. Lose everyone to it."

"Mary died of a heart attack", Sherlock reminds him, and he tries not to cough. He's cold. 

"Who cares what she died of – have to bury everyone I love, don't I." 

Sherlock can't breathe. 'John –."

"Shh", John's hand moves through his hair, grey now. It takes him back. A lot of things do, as the ticks slow own and death grows nigh. Sherlock doesn't mind, he thinks of fire, and defying physics. And explosions. Pine trees. 

John holds a reminiscent smile. 

"Remember that time we were together?" 

Sherlock hums his yes. How can he forget, it's carved into his bones. 

"That's the time you stole this jumper, innit? Even though you said it was, what - ? Revolting?"

"Hideous."

John leans down, kisses his jaw without caveat. His eyelids. His cheekbones. His lips.

Death looms near and the tears are as sudden as the kisses, and they mingle with his own. John laughs, warms lines of his face light up without a candle, and Sherlock still wears his heart on his sleeve.

He hasn't had Chinese in a while. 

"Not a bad run, then", Sherlock says, scratchily. "Interesting."

"Oh yes." John kisses his palm. "Especially those bees. No one will look after them as well as you did."

"I'm sure not everyone's completely useless."

 "Seventy-two years on the planet and that's your conclusion? Everyone can't be completely useless." 

His lips are soft on Sherlock's knuckles. 

"But that's a hell of a compliment, coming from you."

"I'll go back to London, you'll want to be buried there." He sniffles, mouth twisting and maybe it's a smile, maybe it's not. "I'll keep Lestrade company – will probably end up burying him as well."

Sherlock nods. They'd talked about this. They'd talked of it every day of the past few weeks, when uncertain became chronic and there was nothing they could do. Don't call Mycroft to the funeral, Sherlock had joked, but they smile fondly at Mycroft through the webcam, and Sherlock loves his brother. With all of the heart that they share, and they've talked about this. 

They do little but talk now, Sherlock confined to the bed, John slow and unsteady on his legs. Well rather, John talks to him and he listens, grunts on occasion. Right now, he's drifting off, hand in John's hand, a lifetime bleeding warmth behind him. 

He drifts, and he thinks about all the things John's given him, and Sherlock loves John. 

He drifts, content with the bees and the country, content with his old age and with John. 


End file.
